If dial-up is your only option, chances are the speed is limited by the phone lines. In most cases they are in very poor condition, so your only option is change your surfing habits like Ken has suggested.

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"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison

You didn't tell us what speed you are presently connecting at. Before I got DSL, I regularly connected at about 40 kbps. The max on most modems is 56 kbps.

There are really 2 speeds at issue. Upload and download speeds and they are different. Most people are interested in download speed, which can be throttled back by the server. So even though your icon says 56k, your actual download speed may only be 26 or 28. Then, the sending server may be slow, too.

In the past I have used the tools at www.pcpitstop.com to test both of these speeds.

These are probably covered in the articles Understudy posted, but here are some things that you can do to make internet pages load faster:

Turn off Javascript and disable Java in your browser preference, these gobble bandwidth. Unfortunately, you may find that they are necessary for many website today. You also could turn off automatically loading images. Pages will load a lot faster then, but will be considerably duller.Try switching to another browser: Opera is reported to be faster. Internet explorer is slow. Firefox is what I use.

set your security to high will eliminate ads and reduce page loading time

There are "boosters" of various names available from ISPs (for which they charge) that will cache more things and will downgrade (however much you are willing) pictures. These usually allow you to right click and upgrade the quality if you want a better look. These can DRASTICALLY increase the speed at which pages render.

There are also services using high gain antennas from water towers and grain elevators that sell high speed service to places with no cable or DSL phone support available. I would try searching on google for such services in your area.

I found that's about as fast a connection as I could get here. A call to the phone company revealed that the switcher between here and the exchange is responsible for the slowness. Until it was upgraded my speed would probably never improve.

I found that's about as fast a connection as I could get here. A call to the phone company revealed that the switcher between here and the exchange is responsible for the slowness. Until it was upgraded my speed would probably never improve.

Yikes, I was getting about 40k when we were dialed in, which was slow enough. I can remember downloading stuff overnight.

My DSL is a pretty funny story, too. I'm almost at the absolute end of the loop length for DSL. They kept telling me that I couldn't get it. Then my neighbor, who gets service off the same pole but whose house is another 300 feet from the pole got it. Finally, they ran a test and I squeaked by. It's slower than another neighbor up the road, but way faster than POTS.

The man came out yesterday to put my second phone in.He found out we had to bring another line to the house from the main line.The one we had was for only two phones, so he put a temp. line in and mine speed ed up. the old line may have been bit by lighting.Bottom line, mine is doing better.The first thing I did was block the pop-up's.About a year ago I upgraded from Windows Me. to XP.Running good for dial-up.doak